


Familiar Places, Worn Out Faces

by thesecretdetectivecollection



Category: Football RPF
Genre: (pretty much all the players tbh), Gen, england nt - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-04
Updated: 2016-12-04
Packaged: 2018-09-06 12:15:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8750479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesecretdetectivecollection/pseuds/thesecretdetectivecollection
Summary: Gary Cahill gets up. And it’s hard, but it’s also not, because he will rise to his feet, tired and aching, standing on bruised legs, clutching at a fresh-broken heart, every single time Wayne Rooney asks him to.The aftermath of the Iceland match.





	

Gary Cahill gets up. And it’s hard, but it’s also not, because he will rise to his feet, tired and aching, standing on bruised legs, clutching at a fresh-broken heart, every single time Wayne Rooney asks him to. They’ve been together a long time, Gary and Wayne, and they’ve had good times and bad together. One thing’s for sure—club rivalries don’t mean anything, not now. Maybe some Liverpool fans are calling for Wazza’s retirement, maybe some United supporters are mocking Sturridge’s body—“glass bones and paper skin,” they say—but not the team.

It’s impossible, really, to be in the team and still be divided. You woke each day, trained, ate, slept, traveled, joked, laughed, frowned, hoped, hoped, _hoped_ together. You lived in this bubble with this group of people—the only people in the world who knew what the inside of the bubble was really like.

And honestly? Gaz knows the boys pretty well at this point, and none of them are petty enough to split along club lines when the wound is this tender, and the same for all of them.

He sees Jordan Henderson leading Jamie Vardy off, an arm around his waist. James Milner makes a beeline over to Joe Hart, one of his oldest friends in the side.

“Chuckie,” he hears James call out, voice quiet and affectionate. Gary knows Charles is Joe’s real name—they all know that, at this point, having teased their keeper about it for a solid week back in March—but he’s never heard that nickname before, realizes it must be a private thing, the sort of thing only an old mate can do. Maybe Joe didn’t want to be teased over it. Then again, maybe Milly wanted to keep it private, between the two of them. Maybe it was both—Milly and Harty had known each other so long at this point that they could practically read each other’s thoughts, after all.

Milly takes Harty under his arm (no mean feat, that, given the relative sizes of the two men). He watches as Joe Hart, tall, strong, sure goalkeeper, leans into his old friend, almost half his size.

Eric Dier and Dele Alli are together, but then again, they always are. Dier’s got his arm ‘roud Dele, and their heads are low and bent towards each other as they speak, hands covering their mouths to prevent the cameras from reading their lips.

It would be nice to have some privacy now and again, Gary muses idly, wondering what anonymity would be like—it’s been so long, he’s honestly forgotten.

He will long for it, he knows, as soon as his feet touch old English soil again.

He picks up his aching feet, and gathers the team’s stragglers beneath his arms, guiding them to the dressing room, all of them following their captain like sheep behind their shepherd. They’re all leaning on each other, except Gary and Wayne. They are the only ones standing unaided, untouched. Some part of Gary aches for human contact, and so he quickens his pace, and walks beside Wayne, shoulders brushing as they lead the boys off the pitch as they led them on it.

The dressing room is quiet and depressing. Raheem is crying now, sitting between Daniel and Jordan, each with an arm around him. So is Dele, though Eric is sat close beside him, stone-faced, lips turned down in a sorry frown. Daniel looks upset with himself, frustrated at his own performance.

Adam is on Jordan’s other side. They’re sat close together, not quite touching. Adam is looking down, very still and very quiet. Jordan is agitated, glancing at Adam often from the corner of his eye, staring but trying not to be caught doing it. He’s looking for something to do—Gary recognizes the restlessness of a man who’s used to the captaincy, used to taking action, standing up and giving speeches, to picking people up when they’re down. But he’s not captain here, and maybe he _doesn’t_ know exactly what to do. England is different. England is always different.

Gary isn’t the sort of lad who runs away from his problems. But he allows himself to shut his eyes and lead his head back until it thuds gently against the metal of his locker. He imagines a country where nobody knows his name. America, maybe. Lamps said the sport was growing over there, but he could still probably be invisible in New York, or Los Angeles, or Vegas.

Just for a few weeks, before he had to report for preseason, which was gonna be a bitch under Conte, if what he’d heard about the Italian manager was true. And then there was the preseason fixtures—not many easy games, they were competing in that bloody International Champions Cup again this year, they’d be playing other top European sides… He shook his head quickly to get out of that train of thought. He’d been a professional footballer for a long time now, and he’d found that the miles a man ran in his thoughts aged him faster than the ones that he sank into his legs.

He pushed back the thoughts, and opened his eyes, leaning forward. He caught Wayne’s eye. The skipper looked exhausted, too. They shared a moment of eye contact, acknowledging the fatigue in their bones.

 _Let’s take a minute_ , that look said. _Let’s have a minute, and then we’ll do what captains do._ Gary inclined his head slightly in agreement, sliding his eyes shut once more.

He slowed his breath, counting to five on each inhale, holding, exhaling, and holding, counting to five at each step.

He took five of those slow, specially-moderated breaths before he opened his eyes, met Wayne’s eyes once more, and they both rose from their seats in almost perfect synchronicity.

Everyone’s eyes were instantly on them. He crossed over, stood next to Wayne, and swallowed.

Wayne spoke first, and then Gary had his turn. And soon enough other senior members of the squad spoke too—Milly stayed seated as he addressed the players, in his quiet, steady, reassuring way, and Adam volunteered a few words.

Joe didn’t say anything. Keepers always took it hardest.

Roy resigned, they found out some twenty minutes later. And so had Gary Neville, they found a couple minutes later. Gary glanced at Wayne, and there was a stiffness about his mouth as if he was displeased by the news. Neville had always belonged to United, after all. The entire coaching staff was gone, in the space of an hour.

They sat in the bus, went back to the hotel, and silence ruled the day.

They got off the bus. Jordan was near the front, and Gary was surprised to see him lingering outside near the doors. He was less surprised when he saw Adam Lallana come out. Jordan stepped forward, wrapped an arm round him, and pulled him off to the side for a quick word. Hendo stayed, and so did Adam, waiting quietly behind him.

Gary watched from the window—he was in the back of the bus—as Clyne received the same treatment. As did Sturridge. And Milly, when he got off the bus. Liverpool had already lost two cup finals, he remembered, with a sort of distant sympathy. They must have tried their best to put Basel behind them, and then they came to France, hoping things would turn around… And here there were. The five of them went off together into the hotel, James out in front, and Hendo in the middle, keeping on eye on his mates. He quickened his step, put some distance between himself and his teammates, until he was beside Joe Hart, who slowed his pace just slightly, so the two men easily fell into step.

It was like he could see the club lines re-forming around them. If they had been alone in a bubble for this long, well, the bubble had truly been burst by now. They weren’t unkind to each other, but one turned to one’s friends in times of need, and friendship with teammates was easier than friendship with opponents-turned-teammates.

He could see it, in the way Harry hung about with Dele and Eric, in the way Wayne went off with an arm around young Rashford, trying to comfort a boy— _that’s all he was, really, just a **boy**_ —who hadn’t been through this before.

A spark of envy burned in his stomach, for all the chances Marcus would still have, but he refused to feed it, and so it died.

He was the last one on the bus, he realized. He got off, and trailed behind his teammates into the hotel. _Vegas might be a bit too loud_ , he thought to himself. LA seemed fairly relaxed. He could stop by, see the old skipper… Liverpool and Chelsea had never really gotten on, but Steven was class, and he knew better than anyone how the boys were feeling. Or New York might be nice too, drop by, see Lamps again. It had been ages since he’d seen Frankie, after all. _Maybe have a kick about_. His heart throbbed. _Maybe not._

He slipped into the hotel room, nodded to his roommate, and flopped belly-first on the bed, letting his eyes close. _Yes, New York would be good_ , he thought before sleep took him away, granting him a brief reprieve from the throbbing ache that was starting to build behind his eyes. 

**Author's Note:**

> Wrote this after England's exit from the Euros, but I kept it to myself--it was too raw for people, I think. But a friend of mine asked if I had anything written, and this was just about all I had at the minute, so I dusted it off and polished it a bit, and posted it to tumblr.


End file.
